[UPDATE] WhatsApp is Back After Two-Hour Outage; Meta Apologizes For the Global Interruption

WhatsApp, a popular messaging app by Meta, has finally returned after a massive outage hit billions of users worldwide.

After the disruption, which reportedly lasted for two hours, the social media tech giant apologized for all the inconvenience they caused to everyone who relied on the chatting platform.

WhatsApp Comes Back Online

According to The Guardian on Tuesday, Oct. 25, Downdetector confirms that the outage started at around 7:50 GMT. At that time, several complaints surfaced online about the incident.

Over 68,000 Whatsapp users in the UK said they experienced some issues when sending messages. Meanwhile, 15,000 and 19,000 users were affected in South Africa and Singapore, respectively.

Aside from that, BBC journalists assigned in Ukraine and Australia said that they could not access the app for a brief moment. This was confirmed by NetBlocks, an internet monitoring association.

"We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today. We have fixed the issue and apologize for any inconvenience," Meta Platforms spokesperson said in a statement.

In another report by BBC, Meta did not mention the reason behind the global outage that lasted for two hours. Although WhatsApp went offline, other Meta-backed platforms, including Facebook Messenger and Instagram, were not affected by the issue.

Two-Hour Outage is No Match Compared to the 2021 Outage

The WhatsApp outage has some implications for some users, especially those doing business meetings through the app. For instance, the outage forced traders to switch to other messaging platforms during trading hours.

Per ESET adviser Jake Moore, the downtime has also impacted several industries outside social media. As such, it has significantly affected the financial industry since almost everyone relies on an internet connection as an outlet for communication.

Although the outage was already annoying because it lasted for two hours, it's still just minimal compared to the outage that took place last year.

Meta said that the downtime lasted for five hours at that time. The reason behind this outage is the mistaken configuration in the network.

Having said that, the platform could not operate even though the servers were online and stable. The Facebook engineers spent many hours solving the issue by reversing the update, although this alone took them some time before they fully fixed the problem.

To spare for the inconvenience it caused the public, Meta apologized to every user affected by the severe interruption this month.

Is the Diwali Season in India to Blame For WhatsApp Outage?

The WhatsApp outage arrived at the same time during the festive season in India. Some people blamed the Diwali celebration for causing the outage yet it's not confirmed to be the main reason.

While it's likely to slow down the service because of the influx of WhatsApp users at that time, the service interruption did not only happen in India at the very least.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry